Avoiding the Drop

The building on your left is Center Hall at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Wabash College is a Division III school, and according to Forbes it’s the 12th best academic institution in the country. Center Hall houses, among other things, the Religion and Philosophy departments that have educated a Vice President and several Congressman on the finer points of thought.

While that may appeal to the more academic side of your consciousness, we’re a soccer blog. This building also houses the offices of theologian and philosopher Stephen H. Webb. The internet sometimes has a short memory; you’d be forgiven if the name isn’t immediately familiar to you. Chances are good, though, that you remember his column: “How Soccer is Ruining America: A Jeremiad”.

We all had quite the go at Dr. Webb a few weeks back; his subtle satire, which probably plays well in academia, didn’t translate into the blogosphere, and many of us (our own site included) missed the joke. Personally, I felt that some of this was harsh; it’s unfair to bash the uninitiated. Fortunately for Dr. Webb, we here at Avoiding the Drop have some experience when it comes to exposing new fans to the game; after some internal discussion we decided to extend him an olive branch and see if he was willing to spend some time actually watching a professional match.

You can probably see where this is going, because there’s no point in writing about him turning us down. The rest is after the jump.

In a minute, I’m going to post a piece written for us by Stephen Webb; at our request, he watched an ESPN360 rebroadcast of the MLS season opener that pitted the Seattle Sounders against the New York Red Bulls. I didn’t give him any background on the game, as is our policy, so he didn’t know that Seattle’s coach won the MLS Cup with Columbus last season, that he beat New York to do it, or that New York is the defending champion of a division they don’t even play in.

Also, on a personal note, I should mention that I found Dr. Webb to be incredibly cordial and fun to work with on this; he did a lot of leg work on his own and took time out of his day not only to watch and do a write-up but to correspond about the process. He was genuinely interested in participating after we floated the idea, and we really appreciate him taking time out of his schedule to do this for us. The only editing I’ve done is where I took out my actual name and put in my (uber-clever) pseudonym; we wouldn’t want my bosses finding out how I pass my time at work, now would we?

My Apologies! I liked it! Stop the emails!

Little did I know when I made fun of soccer in a widely disseminated blog, “How Soccer is Ruining America: A Jeremiad,” that I would have to do penance by watching an entire game. I told [Magnakai Haaskivi], the nice man who proposed this to me that my article was meant as a joke and that furthermore, I had never watched an entire soccer game, and he said that he could tell that from my article. Like a kindly priest, he thought this task would be good for my soul-or at least for my relationship with all the readers of my piece who sent me hundreds of angry emails. Perhaps now I would not need to change my email address.

My spoof was a parody of a typical angry white male diatribe (of which I have written several serious ones myself) as well as a satire on the whole idea of taking sports too seriously. Could soccer really ruin America when so few Americans even care about it? (I keep telling myself not to joke around in this article, but it’s not working.) I thought there were plenty of signals in my article about my true intentions, beginning with the overly serious subtitle: A Jeremiad (taken from the biblical Prophet Jeremiah, by the way). I threw in that big word as a red flag (or is it a yellow card?), but many people evidently thought I was being serious when I said that Jesus would have disapproved of soccer because he washed his disciples feet at the last supper or that soccer is a liberal invention because it enforces a uniform handicap on the players.

So as punishment for such obscure humor, here I sit, on a Thursday afternoon, with a cup of coffee, a stack of books by my computer (just in case), and a note on my door that reads, “I’m watching soccer. Please disturb me.” (Fortunately, my students have a better sense of humor than most soccer fans.)

You might wonder what I am doing watching soccer at work. Well, I don’t have cable TV at home, but it is also the case that professors are among the laziest workers in the American economy. But it isn’t their fault; it’s the tenure system. Once you get tenure, you are as untouchable as the Democratic mayors who control our most impoverished cities. Even if I were to be reported to my department chair or dean, however, I would just tell the truth. This is research! After all, I have a colleague who teaches video games, so just imagine what he does all day long.

Alright, on to the game, though I should say first of all that I did not know there was a professional soccer league in America, and I certainly did not know that games can draw such a big crowd, with marching bands and painted faces. Don’t infer anything from this about how poorly soccer is represented in the American media, because I’m one of those guys who refuse to buy a converter box and can’t wait until the TV goes dark in our house.

Now, I tried to write while watching the game but accidentally deleted it and had to start it all over, so this is written at the end, and I promise I only fast-forwarded through a couple of minutes of the second half.

What can I say? If I say I really enjoyed it, will anyone believe me? My friends will think I have caved in to all of the death threats I’ve received. Ok, truth: I really enjoyed it, although just a few minutes into the game, when a player went down, held his leg, and begged for a foul, I told myself not to conclude that soccer players need to work on their ritualized scowling. He got up and had to limp for a few feet to preserve his sense of self-respect. Football players do this too, but their helmets keep us from seeing what bad actors they are.

Then the game gushes out, pouring forth like a bunch of holes stabbed into a dam, letting loose hundreds of streams of fast moving water that threatens to bring down the dam altogether. Why didn’t anyone tell me that soccer plays use their hands so much? I found myself watching the shoving, the hand checks, the body positioning as much as the feet. And the feet! Soccer gives new meaning to the word deft. The dribbling was every bit as intense and controlled as basketball, but it was more impressive precisely because feet are not supposed to be as useful as hands. The number and variety of kicks were astounding: scoops, touches, sliding kicks, high kicks, chest kicks, shin kicks, slices, digs, boots, and shuffles. Coaches must choreograph rather than diagram plays. When I was a kid, I sprained my ankle all the time. These guys must have universal joints in their legs.

And I started following the strategy, intrigued by the idea that a team can move the ball backward in order to reorganize for an attack. Does any American sport do that? It is as if football teams were permitted to give up yards without a penalty in order to find more room on the field for offensive maneuvering. I loved it that retreat was not necessarily a sign of defeat.

At first I thought New York was the superior team. They seemed to be controlling the ball more, but a fumble near the goal reminded me of too many similar plays by my beloved Indianapolis Colts this year, and seemed to take their momentum away. A high penalty kick served as an appropriate symbol of the energy New York could not properly and productively channel. Then Seattle came out of nowhere with a fast break goal. When Seattle first scored, I loved the way they posted what minute it was, as if to say, “See, it didn’t take that long, did it?” Seattle’s second goal, which caught the announcers napping, went right between the legs of the goalie. There was something deeply satisfying about seeing that.

The second half lagged a bit. I thought New York could have been more aggressive. But at the 69^th minute, symmetry and design gave way to barely controlled chaos, as if a bunch of people were playing a game of pool all at the same time, with elbows and cue sticks colliding. And seeing Dane Richards take a shot to the head made me think that batters in baseball are not nearly as brave.

Seattle’s third goal was as beautiful as it was simple. New York was tiring, somebody must have been out of place, and a Seattle player steals the ball, goes one on one against the goalie, with a New Yorker defender coming up right on top of him just as he kicks it in. I stood, whooped, and clapped, and then peered out my door to make sure nobody was watching me from the hallway.

If I were a young man starting out in the world today, I think I would become a soccer fan. It is a badge of distinction, setting you apart from the mindless droves who still think the fake wrestling of the NBA is exciting and the shrinking few with enough time on their hands and numbers in their head to follow the strategic intricacies that get you through the long stretches of nothingness in professional baseball. (Now I suppose I’ll get some emails over those comments, but I’m sticking to them. I’ve seen plenty of basketball and baseball games.) I look forward to watching another game, and I might even attend my kids’ games without bringing some books to read. I did have to pause the game a couple of times to register students for next fall’s semester, and I can report that soccer is certainly more exciting than filling out paperwork. There’s no debate about that. Now, before I run off to my kids’ soccer practices, can we talk about what’s really ruining America? How about T-Ball?

So there you have it. We here at Avoiding the Drop would like to sincerely thank Dr. Stephen Webb for his participation in our little project here.